Dear god, this fic is simply brilliant – the intense bond between Jace and Alec, even when (or rather, because) they can’t be parabatai anymore, their growing longing, the pain and angst, it left me breathless.

3b is succeeding in one thing: it’s actually making me care about Malec again, as my heart keeps breaking for Magnus. This vid encapsulates everything, all the pain and love and sacrifice for both of them.

It’s not like Alec is blind to the consequences; of course he isn’t. He’s more than capable of understanding that at their core, each of them would always lead back to his decision to keep Jace alive whatever the cost. Nothing else had mattered then. It still doesn’t now.

“What?” Jace smolders at him, no other words for it, eyes burning and jaws working in that way that makes the bottom drop out of Alec’s stomach.

“I’d say undressing me with your eyes but it’s, um, multiplied by a lot.” Alec opens his mouth trying to catch his breath because there suddenly seems to not be enough air for it, running his eyes down Jace’s body and back up and down again helplessly.

If Magnus is going to love Alexander (which of course he is) then he’s going to have to understand his parabatai and their bond, at least a little bit better than he does now. But he’s not entirely sure how or where to start…

Becoming parabatai takes practice. Training before the ceremony itself, physical and mental, meditation and sparring, how to move together, think together, read each other’s cues even before you can feel them.

How to live together, because if you can’t even handle being classmates, roommates, compatriots, partners, you’ll never survive being soulmates.

You have to prove you’re practically soulmates on your own before they’ll let you take the rune and make it real.

Magnus finds young Alec and Isabelle living on the streets of New York in a time of chaos among the Downworlders and takes them in. He doesn’t know their last name, how they ended up on the streets, or why they seem to have so many secrets, but they have the Sight and he can’t bear to leave them on their own.

As they grow older and discover the atrocities happening in the Shadoworld, Alec takes on the mantle his mother had left behind to protect his family. And Jace? He’s a whirlwind of flirting and secrets that crashes into their lives and refuses to leave. Together they may bring about the change the Shadoworld needs.

Teen, canon-divergence. This is simply wonderful – an epic-length story that’s about family and Shadow world politics as much as about two boys falling in love.